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Defence exhibition

opens today

KUALA LUMPUR: Asia's fast-track economies will go shopping for high-tech military hardware in a changing security environment as one of the region's biggest defence exhibitions opens on Tuesday.

"They're not looking for cheap and cheerful," said Brendan Kelly, director of Malaysian Exhibition Services which is organising the four-day Defence Services Asia (DSA) exhibition and conference.

Reflecting Asia's stunning economic growth and the emergence of post-Cold War hot spots such as the Korean peninsula, the Taiwan Straits and the Spratly Islands, the exhibition is twice as big as the previous one held in 1994.

Some 626 companies from 43 countries would compete to clinch deals potentially worth billions of dollars in the Asia-Pacific region, Kelly said on Monday.

The customers are invited defence ministers, military leaders and procurement officers from throughout Asia. The exhibition is not open to the public.

Malaysia alone has allocated 5.0 billion ringgit ($2 billion) under its 1996-2000 five-year plan to buy battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers, navy patrol vessels and helicopters.

The annual defence budgets for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- totalled nearly $9.0 billion, said DSA director Azzat Kamaludin.

DSA organisers said Southeast Asian nations were either considering or had committed to military purchases worth a total of $50 billion over the past two years.

The gradual withdrawal of the United States from its Asian bases and the painful lesson of Bosnia that nations may have to fend for themselves has caused strategic rethinking in the region, defence analysts say.

Kelly noted the emphasis in this exhibition was on "more conventional approaches" reflecting "much more focus on regional self-defence and opposed to relying on someone else".

He said that many of the purchases were to replace old and outdated equipment as countries matched each other's modernisation efforts.

Malaysian defence analyst Sachi Thananthan said governments now had larger defence budgets.

"With China, North Korea and India flexing their muscles, other countries in Asia realise they must be able to fight their own battle for at least a short period of time," he said.

"Bosnia and Somalia have shown everyone how long it can take for help to arrive."

The star of this show will be battle tanks.

Britain's Vickers Plc, Poland's Z.M. Bumar Lebedy and South Korea's Hyundai have all brought tanks to the exhibition.

All three are bidding to supply up to 300 to the Malaysian army.

Several shipbuilders, which are bidding to supply 27 frigate-size patrol vessels to Malaysia, are also at the exhibition.

South Africa, Korea, Austria and Pakistan are participating in the exhibition for the first time.

Britain has the largest number of companies represented with more than 90. Russia, which has had significant success in Southeast Asia since the break-up of the Soviet Union is also one of the major exhibitors.

The United States pavilion is led by Boeing Co, which is trying to sell Malaysia its heavy-lift Chinook helicopter.-Reuter